Family Matters
by Kavi Leighanna
Summary: Tension in the lab. Ah, that tension. DL involving OC COMPLETE! Sequel up: Baby Steps Backwards.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"I come bearing popcorn," Lindsay Monroe exclaimed, stepping into the living room of her apartment, the plastic bowl in her hand. The young woman on the couch looked up happily.

"I'd be offended if you didn't," Emily Reichle shot back, curling up tighter under the blanket on the couch.

Lindsay laughed. "Am I the best aunt or what?"

Emily giggled at the same time. "You've always been the best aunt.

At only eight years Emily's senior, Lindsay was really more of a sister to her niece than her aunt. Emily's move to New York had been permitted mostly because Lindsay was living in the bustling metropolis. They got together monthly, so Lindsay could check in and make sure everything was still okay.

Tonight was one of the monthly movie nights.

Lindsay handed the bowl to Emily as she sat. Her next reach was intended for the remote but the ringing of her land line had her groaning and reaching for it instead.

"I know we're only supposed to use this for emergencies but your cell phone was off."

"Hi Danny."

"Plus, I guess this could constitute as an emergency."

Lindsay raised an eyebrow, though she knew Danny couldn't see it. "What's up?"

"I need a drink, thought I'd see if you wanted to come with."

"I can't."

" Montana, come on."

"My niece is over for the night," she tried to explain. "It's a thing."

"For the night? Isn't that kinda pointless?'

"She's a student at NYU," Lindsay explained, glancing over at the young woman in question. Emily's eyes were glowing and Lindsay knew she was in for the third degree as soon as she hung up the phone.

"You sure you don't want to come?" he cajoled.

"I can't. Raincheck?"

"You're on."

Emily squealed.

"What was that?"

"That was my niece. I've got to go or I think she might attack me." Lindsay could almost hear Danny's eyebrow raising. "Don't ask. I'll see you in a couple of days."

"Couple of days?"

"It's a sleepover, Danny. Mac gave me the weekend off months ago."

"A couple of days it is."

Lindsay chuckled softly. "Good night, Danny."

"Night Montana."

* * *

It was a peeved Lindsay Monroe that stepped into the apartment the next morning. Stella called her at around seven, apologizing profusely for calling her in on her day off but giving her an address for a multiple murder. The first thing she noticed when she stepped into the small apartment, kit in hand, was not the body sprawled in the hall or the blood on the carpet. Instead, she noticed the resemblance it had to most of the other drug-involved crimes she'd processed.

" Montana," Danny greeted as he stepped beside her in the doorway. "Isn't today your day off?"

"Stella called," Lindsay tried to explain.

"You got roped into it," Danny said knowingly, leaving her behind to head further into the apartment.

"I did not!" Lindsay replied indignantly.

Don Flack raised an amused eyebrow as he stepped up beside her.

"It was supposed to be my day off," she said in explanation.

"Ah… We've got three bodies. Girl on the bed, guy on the floor in the bedroom, and girl here in the hall"

"And ID?" she asked, falling into the routine easily.

"Two NYU students and a Julliard kid," Flack said. "Stella's got the girl in the bedroom and with the way Messer rushed by I'd say he's staking claim to the musician."

"Which means I get the girl in the hall," Lindsay agreed, setting her case down by the body. It was the better part of an hour before she was disturbed from her processing.

"She looks so young." Sheldon Hawks said as he crouched down beside her.

"Twenty. Same age as my niece," Lindsay agreed, lifting another stray hair. "Lynn Stevenson."

"Gun shot to the chest," he observed.

"Probably didn't have a chance."

"Coroner should be on their way up. I caught a ride out here with them."

Lindsay pushed herself up to stand, her eyes travelling over the room. "I was just about to do the room. You up for it?"

He grinned. "Let's do it."

Flashlights lit parts of the dimly lit room as they wandered over knick knacks, picture frames, books and magazines.

"Check this out," Sheldon called, shifting through the box on the coffee table.

Lindsay looked down at the box, picking up one that had been ripped in half. "Someone was upset. Is there another half?"

Sheldon pulled out three or four other halves and Lindsay nodded in understanding. "Bag it. I want to know what these pictures are about."

"You and me both," he agreed as Lindsay's cell phone rang cheerfully. She checked the caller ID and frowned.

"Go take it," Sheldon urged. "I'll keep looking."

She shot him a grateful glance and stepped into the hallway, flipping open her phone. "Hello?"

"Aunt Linds, it's Em."

"What's up?"

Emily never called her cell phone unless it was an emergency. "I haven't seen my roommate." Emily's voice sounded worried.

"You're in college Em. There's going to be nights where your friends don't come home," Lindsay tried to reassure.

"She wasn't in class and she didn't take a bag with her," Emily protested. "Something's wrong."

Lindsay sighed. "Did you file a missing persons?"

"You were the one that made the point about the college student. Who's going to believe me?"

"Okay. You caught me in the middle of a scene but when I get back to the station, I'll check in, okay?" she compromised.

"Promise?"

"I promise. Take a breath. I'll call you later." She took a moment after she hung up to lean against the wall. Emily was her oldest niece, the first member of her family apart from her to leave Montana and was only allowed because her parents assumed and made Lindsay promise she'd watch over their little girl.

" Montana, you alright?"

"Don't call me that," she groaned. "What's up?"

"Stella and I are done. I'm going to take stuff back to the lab. You want a ride?" Danny asked, hiding most of his concern by the time she opened her eyes and looked at him.

"Yeah," she decided. "I've got to deal with something back at the station."

"Need your kit?"

She nodded. "Give me five."

* * *

Lindsay and Danny pulled up to the residence building at the university.

"I hate this part," she said softly as she unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door of the SUV.

"I can't think of anyone that likes it," Danny replied, stepping to her side.

"Do you have the room number?" she asked unnecessarily.

"Of course I do, Montana." Sometimes he was annoyed by her nagging but most of the time he was amused.

They made it up there together, down the halls, stopping at the door. Double-checking the room number Flack had provided them with, Danny knocked on the door. A muffled voice called fro them to wait a minute. The young woman that opened the door smiled widely, hope more than evident in her face.

"You found her?" Emily Reichle asked hopefully.

Lindsay blinked.

"Found who?" Danny asked, confused.

"My roommate. I called Aunt Linds because I was worried," Emily tried to explain.

"Aunt Linds? You didn't tell me," Danny said, a smirk skittering across his face.

"I didn't know," Lindsay replied slowly, shock still evident in her voice. "Emily, this is Detective Messer. Danny, my niece Emily Reichle."

"You're Detective Messer," Emily exclaimed. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Em," Lindsay said on a sigh. "This isn't a social call. Can we come in?"

Emily went sober. "What's going on?"

"Can we come in, Miss Reichle?"

Emily stepped back, opening the door. Danny and Lindsay stepped in, both of them taking in the room carefully.

"What's going on?"

"We found Lynn," Lindsay said softly.

Emily's eyes widened. "No…"

"I'm so, so sorry, honey," Lindsay replied softly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "We found her body this morning."

Emily dropped to her bed in shock, dislodging Lindsay's arm. "But Lynn…"

"We've got a few questions for you," Danny broke in.

The university student nodded her head, signalling he could ask away.

"When was the last time you saw Lynn Stevenson?"

* * *

**_Let me know what you think, especially about characters that may be OOC or if you think Emily's a MarySue... I promise I won't take it offensively!_**


	2. Chapter 2

"Um… last night, before I went out."

"Where did you go?" Danny asked.

"She came to my apartment," Lindsay spoke up, her eyes widening at the implications. "Mac's going to kill me."

"What time did you leave?"

Emily looked worried for a minute. "Um… my plans with Aunt Linds were for 4, but she was still working…"

"I picked her up after shift," Lindsay volunteered. "It was probably about 5:30 when I picked her up here."

Danny hated this. "When did you get back?"

"This morning. Aunt Lindsay got called into the lab and she brought me back here on the way," Emily answered. "I assumed Lynn would be back. I mean, she's not really the type of girl to stay out partying all night and I got kind of freaked."

"Did you know where she was going?"

Emily nodded, tears filling her vision. "Her sister's, I think. She and her boyfriend had been talking about doing it for a while."

" Lynn had a boyfriend?" Danny asked, his voice polite interest.

"Ryan… Ryan something."

"No last name?"

"I can't remember one. He comes over sometimes, but I don't usually stick around."

"You leave home often?"

"I leave the room. Lynn and I are in different programs so we don't usually spend a lot of time together. When she has Ryan over I like to give them privacy. I have a friend down the hall I usually go stay with."

Danny nodded, as Lindsay stood, inspecting the pictures around one half of the room. He kept a corner of his eye on her, unsure of the result of the involvement of her niece on her.

The pictures were new to Lindsay. She'd never been in Emily's room before. "These are Lynn's?"

Emily nodded. "She fought with her sister all the time, but she didn't like it. That was half of the reason I spent time away from here. She fought with her sister constantly, and I hated it… she hated it."

"And she never did anything about it?" That came from Lindsay.

"She tried. I've told you a hundred times, Aunt Linds."

Lindsay nodded absently. "This Ryan?"

Emily nodded.

Danny moved over, his head over her shoulder. "Looks like our male DB," he whispered in her ear.

Lindsay closed her eyes as his breath caressed her ear. She may have rejected him a few months ago, it didn't stop her body from responding to him, nor did it curb her real feelings. "We'll take them back with us," she agreed, her voice much softer than she'd meant it to be.

"Thanks, Miss Reichle. We're going to take a few of Lynn's things so we can get a better idea of her," Danny said, snapping on a pair of gloves.

"Sure," Emily said with a nod.

A look passed between Lindsay and Danny before Lindsay reached a hand out to her niece. "Come on. We'll go sit down in the lounge."

"Don't… don't I have to be here? To watch him?"

"No sweetheart. You don't have to."

Emily nodded and she and Lindsay left the room.

* * *

Mac walked through the halls with a purpose, his target sitting calmly in her office doing paperwork for another case. She'd wanted to go through the photo box, wanted to go over all of the other pictures Danny had brought back from Lynn and Emily's residence room.

"How could you do this?" he stormed into the office.

"I didn't know, Mac."

"She's your niece!"

Lindsay jumped as he slammed his fist on her desk. She took a deep breath, trying to keep herself calm. "I haven't touched any evidence since I found out, ask Danny."

"You didn't come to me."

"Damnit, I didn't know! I haven't touched evidence, Mac, what else do you want from me?" Emotionally, she was at the end of her rope as it was. She was tired, she was worried and now she had Mac breathing down her neck. "This paperwork is for a different case, Hawkes and Danny are probably processing through the photo box I wanted to look through, and I didn't touch anything in that residence room besides the door and my niece."

"Why didn't you come to me right after being to NYU?"

"I still have to process it, Mac. She's my niece. She's a Montana girl through and through and now her roommate's been murdered."

He really couldn't stay mad at her when she looked as down as she did. "You're off the case."

She looked down at her shoes. "I know."

* * *

Danny and Hawkes were pawing through the pictures they'd collected from Lynn's residence room and Claudia's photo box. Hawkes and Stella had also made a foray into Ryan's apartment and their pictures were also spread on the layout table.

"So what are these telling us?" Danny asked unnecessarily.

"Evidence tells us two different stories," Hawkes revealed. "We've got pictures of Lynn Stevenson with Ryan Hann, but Ryan had what could only be classified as a shrine behind his dresser to Claudia Stevenson." He waved to the two sets of pictures where they were laid out.

"So we can assume Claudia Stevenson and Ryan Hann dated. But then why did Lynn have pictures of the same guy. I mean, they look pretty cuddly."

"Well, the one's in Claudia's box are ripped. Looks like…"

"A brutal break up," Danny finished. "So Lynn started dating Ryan after he broke up with Claudia. That would cause a rift between sisters."

"There's no way she could've beat her sister though."

"That I agree with. Her roommate says she was a sweet as pie. Other classmates agree."

"So its true that her roommate is Lindsay's niece?"

"Yeah," Danny answered, picking up more pictures. "Why did they go over there?"

" Lynn wanted to visit her sister?" Hawkes provided. "You said the roommate was fighting with her sister. Is it a far stretch to say they wanted to fix everything?"

Lindsay stepped into the room, white lab coat hanging off her shoulders.

" Montana, put some evidence in context for us?"

She looked up sharply. "Mac pulled me off the case, conflict of interest."

Before any of them could say anything else – or Danny could get indignant on her behalf, as we was apt to do – Lindsay's phone rang. She checked the number carefully and smiled.

"My niece. Hey." Her face paled at the voice that answered. "Stella? Why do you have my niece's cell phone."

Stella looked up from across the hall, taking the six strides across the hall to reach them. "It was in Lynn Stevenson's purse."


	3. Chapter 3

Emily sat in the interrogation room early the next morning, calm as could be. Or she looked like it. Her eyes were glazed, focused on a point on the wall. She looked up as a man and a woman stepped in, the former she recognized as Detective Messer, the one that had accompanied Lindsay to tell her about Lynn.

"Detective Messer, how's my aunt?" That was, after all, her main worry. Emily knew Lindsay and her mother had been at odds because of her choice of colleges. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to make Lindsay feel even worse than she knew she already was.

It was the woman that took the lead. "Detective Bonesera," she introduced.

Emily looked at her briefly, memory providing the name from her aunt's stories. Stella. "Pleased to meet you. My aunt?"

"She's not in legal trouble," Danny answered, setting the file on the table. "But her boss things she's protecting you."

"Now why would your aunt feel that she had to protect you?" Stella asked, taking a seat.

"Other than the fact that my mother's going to kill her?" Emily replied, then sighed. "I'm not the one that needs the protection."

Danny raised an eyebrow but refrained from commenting. Why would Lindsay's niece say Lindsay was the one that needed protection? "We found your cell phone in Claudia Stevenson's apartment."

" Lynn didn't have one and my parents made sure I did. I didn't take it with me to Aunt Linds' because I figured I wouldn't need it and I wanted Lynn to call if she was on her way home. I can be just as paranoid as my parents." Her façade cracked then, tears starting to slide down her face. "I wanted her to be safe."

"You didn't worry when she didn't call?" Stella asked.

"I see Aunt Linds once a month. We always make sure it's a sleepover because we always lose track of time. We get absorbed in the movies, live vicariously through the characters because neither of us have that much time for a life. This time it was…_Rent _and _The Perfect Man. I'm a sucker for Chris Noth." Emily sighed. "I didn't realize Lynn hadn't called until I woke up and I figured it meant she stayed at her sister's." _

"She do that often?"

Emily shook her head. "This would have been the first time."

"That still doesn't explain why your aunt would risk her job to lie for you."

Emily was getting angry. "Look, I wasn't there. I gave Lynn my phone because she didn't have one, in case something happened. I'm the only family Aunt Linds has in New York and family's important to her. She works too hard to worry about protecting someone. The only reason she'd 'risk her job' is because she's telling the damn truth!"

"That phone puts you at the scene of three murders," Stella pressed.

"And I'd be scared if I was actually there!" Emily took a deep breath, trying to calm her raging anger. "She's been through ore than enough with her shooting, okay? She doesn't need more hassle over something neither of us were involved in."

Danny was surprised at how much she looked like an angry Lindsay. "Shooting?" he asked.

"In Montana, before she came here," Emily replied, tone suddenly suspicious. " Nan and Papa hated that she went back."

"Don't think I understand," Danny said, eager to hear about the thing that had driven Lindsay Monroe to New York.

" Montana has a certain… stereotype, especially small-town Montana. Lindsay didn't want to be the housewife, never did. She went to school excelled in science, became an investigator. That was when the family started to pull away. They wanted her to quit, thought the job was too dangerous for a born and bred country girl. When she got shot on the job, they figured that was it for her, that she'd find a man, settle down… the whole thing. She didn't. They tried pressuring her to do it and she moved to New York. She took the job here."

Stella and Danny were silent.

Emily sighed. "She's worked too damned hard to get where she is to compromise her job. Even if you don't believe us, believe that."

Stella sensed the woman across from her closing up and backed off, regardless of the million of questions still running through her head. This opened up a whole new perspective of the investigation, one that actually had very little to do with the victims and more to do with the investigators. She stood. "We'll be staying in touch."

Danny didn't move. Emily had stunned him completely.

Emily was the one to break the silence. "Look, Detective, this… by the look on your face I'm assuming she didn't tell you any of this. I'm staying with her for now but the instant my parents get here, I'm gone. Keep an eye on her, okay?"

Danny met her worried gaze, realizing she was talking to him. "What?"

"She's… prone to nightmares. She has them like crazy over Christmas and Thanksgiving when she goes home to Montana, whenever she has to deal with the rest of the family. My parents…"

"She can be stubborn," Danny replied.

Emily smiled, standing now that her nerves had allowed her to stand and her knees to lock. "Aren't we all." She walked out of the room.

* * *

He stood at the window of the visiting rooms, watching Emily sitting calmly in on the couch. Her words rang through his mind. Lindsay needed protection? From nightmares of a past shooting? He really was going to have to chat with Monroe when he got a chance.

Danny watched a woman rush in five minutes later, pulling Emily into a huge hug and pulling her as close as possible. Danny watched with a confused frown. Emily looked tense, looked anything but happy to see her mother in a time of crisis. Stella came to stand beside him as the man he assumed to be Emily's father hugged the student.

"Parents?"

"Yeah but watch them," he instructed.

"What for?" she asked.

"Look at Emily. She's stiff and tense… they're her parents."

"You're looking for things, Danny. Fishing."

"Her testimony's not sitting right, Stel."

"About the case?"

He sent her a look. The tone of her voice said she knew his gut problem was not about the case. "Something…. Lindsay came to New York for a reason."

Stella glanced at the other side of Danny, noticing Lindsay around the corner. "Family?"

"I don't know, Stel."

She made sure she had his eyes. "Ask her. Lindsay!"

The Montana native stepped up beside them awkwardly.

"You're not going to go in and say hello?" Stella asked politely.

Lindsay shook her head. "Emily wants me to run her back to my apartment. She needs some of her stuff."

"Her room's still being processed. Where is she going to stay?" Stella asked worriedly.

"With her parents in their hotel room," she answered and both Stella and Danny could hear some unkown tone in her voice.

"She's not staying with you?" Stella asked in surprise.

Lindsay just shook her head.

Danny couldn't help himself. "Emily like her parents?"

"Talks to them all the time."

Another question wouldn't have mattered, for the Reichle adults stepped out of the room, not once glancing around at their observers. Emily's shoulders moved up and down with the effort of the air she took in. Then she stepped out of the room. Lindsay simply wrapped an arm around her niece's shoulder, truning to lead her out of the lab.

"Detective Bonesera, Detective Messer," Emily greeted softly, her eyes locking on Danny's. "I'll see you."

He watched them leave, his mind no more at ease than before Emily's interview.

"She'll tell you," Stella assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Let me know if you hear anything."

Danny was left in the hallway of the lab with his thoughts.

* * *

Stella and Danny stepped into Sid Hammerback's morgue.

"Sid," Stella called, noticing the ME.

"I've got all three of your victims and let me tell you, your first girl took quite the beating."

"So what've we got?" Danny asked, his hands in his lab coat pockets.

"Miss Stevenson took beating to her face, broken ribs, her stomach is bruised in a million places."

"Official COD?" Stella asked.

"Blunt force trauma. She's got haemorrhaging to the back of her brain like crazy."

"Beaten to death?"

"Most likely. Now, your young lady here, took a gunshot to the chest. Other than that, she was pretty healthy."

"Do you have a slug?" Stella asked.

"I have two, one from your girl and one from you boy," Sid answered, handing over both containers to Stella's waiting hands.

"Now, there was evidence on your first girl of intercourse. I sent semen up to DNA. Your boy here has brutalized knuckles. That was my main reason for the assumption that he beat up your first vic."

Stella smiled brilliantly at him, like she did every time he did something without asking. "Thanks Sid. Anything else?"

"Your first victim had all sorts of defensive wounds, but also had bruises on her wrists."

"Perp held her down," Stella provided.

"I sent the bits under her nails to trace, but they'll probably bump it over to DNA. Other than that, we're done."

Danny sighed. "That was worthless. Sorry Sid."

Sid exchanged a look with Stella as Danny walked out of the morgue. "What's up with him?"

"Closest suspect we've got is Lindsay's niece."

"Her niece?" Sid was more than surprised. There wasn't much he knew about the young Montana native, but he remembered the case of the mermaid, where she educated him on rawhide braiding. He'd assumed the rest of her family was still in the west.

"Danny's been pretty irritable about it," Stella said with a secretive smirk.

Sid returned it. "I don't understand why."

Stella patted his shoulder as she passed, her smirk still firmly in place. "Thanks Sid."

* * *

_**As per usual, my sincerest and total thanks to the people who have reviewed... I love you guys so much especially since this is my first foray into the complicated world of Lindsay and Danny's relationship. I hope you guys don't mind Emily...**_

_**I have this story completely written, actually, I'm just taking my time putting up the chapters. And I have a sequel in the works that'll address more of Lindsay's fears. You'll see... Maybe? Actually, you guys'll only see it if you want it. **_

_**Hugs**_


	4. Chapter 4

Danny found Lindsay with her head down on her desk I their office. He watched her for a moment, She'd become progressively irritable over the past couple of days and he was pretty sure he knew why. Emily's warning about nightmares and the bags he saw but never commented on confirmed that she hadn't been sleeping well.

" Montana, its quittin' time," he called to her, not moving from is spot in the doorway.

Lindsay simply turned her head, only slightly surprised to find an abundance of concern in his gaze. "I've got a few more reports to finish up."

"Nuh huh, Montana. Time to go home

"Really. I have to do these…"

"I'll give you a ride and spring for Italian if you'll go home." It was a given that he'd be sharing her dinner and he figured he could convince her to let him stay and watch the Yankees game that was supposed to be on.

Lindsay couldn't resist that, even if it meant Danny would be eating with her. In fact, it was that idea that had her nodding. She didn't want to be alone. "Okay."

He allowed silence in the car, for once thankful for the New York traffic. Lindsay fell asleep within minutes, her head against the coolness of the window. Danny watched her as he drove, thankful she'd managed to nod off.

Lindsay twitched in her sleep and Danny glanced over when he stopped at a red light. When she twitched again, groaning, he almost reached out to comfort her. His hand retracted inches from her knee cap. He'd figured she'd been sleeping horribly and chalked it up to the nightmares, but to consider that she was having one while in the car terrified him. He debated with himself as he waited for the light to change. Was it worth it to wake her up?

Instead, his hand trailed across her forearm as he kept his eye on the light. "Lindsay, it's a nightmare, you're okay," he said softly. He'd decided the last thing he wanted to do was wake her, not when she'd looked so exhausted. Much to his surprise, Lindsay calmed almost instantly, her hand taking his when it reached her fingers. He couldn't help the smile that blossomed over his face.

He'd decided what to order at his favourite Italian place, his hand still firmly wrapped in Lindsay's. She didn't move for the ride back to her apartment except to shift in an attempt to find comfort. Danny left it there until they reached her apartment.

" Montana," he called. "We're here."

Her eyes blinked open. "Did I fall asleep?"

"'Bout five minutes into the ride."

"You let me sleep?"

"You've been lookin' exhausted, Montana. Figured some sleep might do you good."

She pressed her palms to her eyes, rubbing them and not realizing the grip she'd had on his hand. "Did you get dinner?"

"While you were out," he replied, flexing his hand to return blood to the limb and waving to the plastic bags he'd managed to get into the back seat.

She yawned. "Let's go eat before I pass out again."

He followed her out of the car and up her steps, grabbing the bags of takeout on the way. He kept a careful eye as she climbed the steps, making sure she'd actually make it.

Lindsay was fading fast, she could feel it. Her nap in the car hadn't done much to replenish her lack of sleep over the previous couple of days. Still, her apartment had been chilly and lonely over the past couple of days since Madeline had Andrew had threatened to pull Emily's college money and she'd removed all traces from her aunt's apartment.

Danny followed her into the apartment, dropping her bags on her coffee table. Lindsay had already wandered further into the apartment, down the hall where he assumed her bedroom and bathroom were located.

"Don't fall asleep, Montana." He called to her, unpacking the two bags and flipping on her television. In actuality, he wouldn't be all that offended if she did fall asleep. He figured he'd give her ten minutes before he worried. The ten minutes passed and he went to check on her.

She'd managed to change into her pyjamas before collapsing onto the bed. He assumed she'd probably passed out right then. He chuckled as he closed the door, debating with himself as to what his next move would be.

His choice was made for him twenty minutes later, after he'd put the food in the fridge and checked on Lindsay again, when he passed out on the couch.

* * *

He'd never heard anything so… he wasn't sure he could even describe the scream that rang through the apartment. It took him a few seconds to register where the screaming was coming from. He was off the couch in an instant when he realized that scream was coming from Lindsay's room.

"Lindsay," he called, grabbing her hand when he reached her room. Whatever the nightmare had been – the shooting he assumed, since that was what Emily had said – it had scared her upright. She tried to pull her hand out of his grasp but he would have none of it. Instead, he pulled her sobbing frame close, wrapping his arms around her shaking body.

It took her brain time to realize who was holding her, but she stopped struggling as soon as her mind placed the scene that clung to the arm holding her. Danny. The night came back to her in bits and pieces as she reoriented herself. He'd come to have dinner with her.

"Did I fall asleep again?" she asked, voice slightly raw from her scream.

Danny chuckled. "Without dinner." Then he went serious. "You haven't been sleeping well, have you?"

Lindsay picked at invisible lint on his shirt, just off to the left of the wet spot her tears created. "Well enough."

"Lindsay…"

She couldn't tell if it was the caring exasperation in his tone or the use of her first name that had her amending her statement, "No, I haven't."

"The case."

She nodded. "And if you're going to tell me we all have them, I'm going to kick your ass."

He chuckled as she rested her head against her shoulder again, one hand crunching his shirt. He noticed. "You want to come sit out with me?"

She shook her head, brushing her chin. When she looked up at him, her eyes were bright. "Can you lie here with me? Just until I fall asleep?"

He looked surprised for a moment and she felt a blush creep over her face. "I don't want to be alone, but if I fall asleep on the couch I'm going to hurt tomorrow. I'm not asking you to stay and you don't actually have to lay down I just…"

Danny was already shifting, moving so they could both rest under the covers. " Montana, you're rambling," he said simply, resting his head on the pillow. He could smell her everywhere, worse than when he was on the couch and starting praying he'd make it through the night.

When he felt her body align to his, his libido suddenly became the last thing on his mind. Lindsay was shaking like a leaf. Her comfort came first as he adjusted so he could wrap his arm around her stomach and pull her back against him.

"Thank you," she whispered, her hand covering his on her stomach. A second later, she could have sworn there were lips against her hair.

"Sleep, Montana."

She did.

* * *

**_Probably ridiculously stereotypical, but I'm missing inspiration with the lack of DL in the episodes lately. Unfortunately, I've been forced to rely heavily on season 2 moments. I actually found out I'm a crappy DL shipper. I hadn't seen the episode with the bug dinner and hadn't realized it until I watched the episode… Fare Game, for those that are aware of the episode titles. _**

**_Anyway, I'm hoping you guys enjoyed this one, especially since it's highly shipper-y. Thanks to everyone that's reviewed. As stereotypical as it sounds it means the world. Reviews are what keep me writing so thank you. Let me know if it's stereotypical or out of character, I have faith in you._**


	5. Chapter 5

He'd left before she'd woken and set the alarm for half an hour later than she usually did, yet she still couldn't find it in herself to be upset. Instead, when she saw him making himself a cup of coffee in the break room, she had a better idea. Quietly, she stepped into the room, glad for her choice of flats instead of heels for more reasons than just making her outfit cute. It didn't take much effort to remove the red mug from his hands and take a sip.

Danny spun, ready to destroy the person who'd taken his first cup of coffee. The fact that it was Lindsay had him rolling his eyes and reaching for another mug. "Good morning to you too."

"Have I ever told you its creepy that we take our coffee exactly the same way?" she quipped in response, her eyes shining in secret gratitude.

"The first time you found out," he answered. 'You're welcome' was written in his eyes.

"Anything new?"

Danny knew her question had two meanings. "Paperwork."

Lindsay groaned. The mundane task of paperwork would mean her mind would be free to wander.

"On the bright side, you'll be first up if we get a new one," he offered as he turned back to making a new cup of coffee.

She waited for him before they strolled back to the office they shared, desks facing each other. She waited until the glass door closed before she spoke. "My alarm went off late this morning," she remarked, shifting through the files on her desk. Apparently the paper had piled up more than she'd anticipated.

"Set it wrong?"

She looked up at Danny startled. She figured he would be a little bit more open since it was the two of them behind closed doors. His CSI face held eyes of concern. "I don't think so." Her frustration had evaporated with the concern. "I woke up once, but slept extremely well after that. The extra half hour was kind of nice."

Danny could feel a smile playing at the corner of is mouth. "Sleep can be funny that way," he agreed easily. Then his pager went off. "Trace on the Stevenson case. See you later?"

Lindsay nodded ruefully.

Danny stepped around to her side of the office, resting his hands on her shoulders and squeezing slightly. "Hang in there Montana."

* * *

Danny called her that afternoon asking for her help with an experiment. He wanted to keep her involved with the case and figured the best way to do that was to ask for her help.

"You paged me?"

He looked up at her with a smile. "Need your help, Montana."

"With what?'

"We've got some voids here, on the sheets. I wanna figure out where they came from."

"And you need me because….?"

"I need you to play Claudia Stevenson."

She raised her eyebrow. "You need my help to find out what voids were made in the sheets?"

"Right. You in?"

She looked indecisive for a moment. "Yeah."

"Figured you would. Now, we figure Claudia was on her back," Danny said, motioning for her to move to the sheet.

She did, her back against the bloodstained fabric. "What do you know."

"We know someone held her wrists down, through to keep her for fighting back or from sex we don't know. She's got nasty bruises, so it was probably a little rough."

Lindsay couldn't stop the blush that stained her cheeks as he grabbed her wrists and held them against the sheets where he'd hold her if he had the opportunity, aligning his body to hers. "No voids," she said softly.

"So Hann held her down," Danny agreed, shifting her hands in his until he could pin them to hold her immobile. This process backed him away only slightly.

Lindsay let out a breath she'd been holding in hopes he wouldn't recognize his effect on her.

"Might make sense, but the problem's still in the evidence. There's blood voids everywhere," Danny said, frustration more than evident in his voice.

She turned around to take in the sheet as a whole, looking at the spot where she'd stood, where the void was and the spatter and splotches that surrounded it. "Most of this is spatter," she noticed, trying to ignore how close Danny was to her back. She could still remember waking up next to him that morning, the feeling of being cuddled against him. She remembered the way he'd held her after her nightmare and found herself wondering why she'd turned him down.

"What makes you say that?"

"These are spatter dots, there's no other explanation," she answered. "Plus, here's the body void." She waved to the white sheets, the void of the spattered blood. "Looks like some of this blood was coughed up, like she turned on her side."

"Why would she do that?"

"Self preservation?"

"What do you mean?"

"The only way I can see these happening is if she turned on her side."

Danny considered that for a moment. "She passed out in a ball."

Lindsay shrugged. "Looks about right." She turned then, surprised by how close Danny had come. She had to look up to see his face.

"We found her on her back."

"So someone moved her. It's not unheard of." Her voice was much breathier than she would have liked, but there wasn't much she could do. He was close and she couldn't help but be enveloped by him, nor could she restrain herself from gasping when his hand lifted to her cheek.

Her pager was the thing to snap them out of it. She pulled it out quickly, scanning the message. "Prints on another case."

He nodded, backing away just enough for her to slip by. "Lunch?"

"On you?" she asked.

"Montana, you keep askin' things like that and I'm gonna start considerin' these things like dates." He did it to tease her, to see her blush and wasn't disappointed. He chuckled to himself when she gave no answer.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

_The gun was pointed at her, at her heart. The organ itself was beating much faster than she liked and was making her light-headed._

"_Put the gun down, Bobby," she said softly, hoping upon her last shred of hope that he would do as she asked. _

_Unfortunately for her, he shook her head. "I can't do that."_

"_You don't want to do this," she replied, still trying to keep her voice calm. A million different things were running though her head, the things she hadn't told her parents, not being the greatest sister for her younger brother…_

_Instead of putting the gun down, like she wished he would, he lowered it to point at her stomach. "I can't be tied down."_

_The gun went off._

She woke up screaming.

When she finally calmed herself down enough to get her bearings, realizing she was in her bed, in New York, and the shooting had nothing to do with anything anymore, her heart rate calmed.

But her head didn't stop racing.

Without really comprehending what she was doing, just knowing she had to, she picked up her phone and dialled Danny's home number.

"'Lo?"

"Danny?" She cursed herself for the broken sound of her voice.

"Mmm…"

"I'm so sorry, I woke you up."

There was silence for a moment, but it irrationally calmed her to hear his breathing. Then, "Lindsay?" He sounded much more awake and she felt even worse for waking him.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I'll let you go back to bed."

"I'm up, Montana. What's going on?"

"It's nothing, Danny, really."

"It's not nothing, Lindsay, or you wouldn't be calling me at 1:30 in the morning."

She glanced at the clock for the first time, feeling even worse for waking him up at such an ungodly hour. "I'm… I'm fine."

"Damnit Monroe, you're not okay. Talk to me."

Lindsay played with a thread on her bedspread. "I…"

"Look, Linds…"

"I had another nightmare," she finally blurted.

He was silent as he took that in and processed it. "I'm on my way."

"No, Danny its—"

He'd already hung up.

She couldn't go back to sleep so she got up and moved to her kitchen, and put a pot of milk on the stove. It allowed her to keep her mind off of the dream. It didn't help much and she still jumped when the buzzer sounded. She didn't bother to check who it was and buzzed him up.

He cupped her face when he stepped inside. "You okay?"

"I told you, I'm fine, it was just a nightmare. I'm being stupid."

He still didn't take her seriously and pulled her closer. "I'm glad you're here and not shot or dead," he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.

She cleared her throat softly. "I put milk on the stove. Want some?"

"You should be in bed, Montana."

"Please, Danny?"

The vulnerability in her voice, that innocence that was associated with her but she didn't always show, halted his protests. "Yeah."

He was worried about her. More than worried even. He wished she'd share with him, hoped she'd be willing to explain why this haunted her so badly. Why was it triggered by her family? What had happened in her family to trigger nightmares, of all things.

Lindsay held a mug out to him. She then sat beside him, sipping at her own. She spoke after a few minutes of silence. "I'm glad you're here," she whispered.

He set his mug down on the table, wrapping his arms around her, mindful of the mug in her hands. "I'm glad I came," he replied.

Lindsay managed to set her mug down and curled tighter into him. "I'm not usually like this," she began softly. "This… needy."

Danny didn't say anything, unsure of where she was going with this.

"I didn't mean… I'm sorry I…" she tried, then sighed. "I'm sorry I called and woke you up."

"Hey, none of that," he told her, pushing her away so he could capture her gaze. "I told you I'd be there for you, Montana, no matter what."

She looked away after a moment and they were silent again. A few minutes later, Danny heard Lindsay take a deep breath.

"Danny?"

"Hm?"

"Can we… I just…" She took another deep breath. "Will you come lie with me again?"

He tried not to look so surprised, especially when he noticed the blush creeping across her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, "I just… I can't sleep and… and it wasn't so bad last night when you stayed—"

"Lindsay," he interrupted with an affectionate smile he couldn't hide. "Stop." Then he untangled himself from her and held out a hand. "Come on, Montana. Let's get you to bed."

Lindsay snuggled up to him again once they'd made themselves comfortable under the blankets and again, though she was pressed tightly against him and not shaking as hard as the previous night, Danny was more concerned about her than anything else. Like he had the previous night, he pressed a kiss to her hair.

"G'night Montana."

"Good night Danny. And thank you."

* * *

When Lindsay woke up the next morning, she was partially surprised to find herself up against another solid form. She couldn't stop the smile from flitting across her lips as she turned gently in his embrace and looked up at his sleeping face. She was glad he hadn't pushed her the night before about talking about her nightmare.

The alarm chose that minute to buzz noisily and Lindsay groaned.

Danny only mumbled slightly and pulled her closer.

"Danny, that's the alarm. We have to get up." She didn't want to get up. She wanted to stay right where she was, curled up against Danny Messer.

"Five more minutes," Danny groaned back.

Lindsay laughed quietly. "No, Danny, you have to get up if you want to shower and change before work."

His eyes slowly blinked open, meeting hers. Neither of them moved from their positions. "Good morning, Montana."

"Hey. Coffee?"

"I'll make you a deal. You hop in the shower and get ready, I'll put coffee on, then we'll stop by my place and I'll shower and change."

Lindsay smiled. "Give me fifteen minutes."

He rewarded her with a New York grin that made her knees shake. "I'll even give you twenty."

She laughed as she forced herself out of bed.


	7. Chapter 7

Lindsay picked up her phone as it rang a week later not checking the ID in her rush. Danny had stayed almost every night, finding some reason to come after work and he usually ended up staying. She chastised herself because she was getting used to the simple routine of it all.

Emily was still a suspect and it still haunted Lindsay. She still felt responsible and tried hard to immerse herself in the cases she'd picked up. Apparently, Danny was smarter. He'd managed to make sure she went home, managed to make sure she slept and ate. She'd find it endearing if it wasn't also endlessly frustrating.

Sid had paged her twenty minutes ago for an autopsy on a new case she'd picked up and that was where she was headed. "Monroe," she answered, pressing her phone to her ear.

"What happened to my daughter?"

Lindsay flinched at the sound of her sister's voice, only pausing in her journey down the stairs. She figured they'd be faster than waiting for the elevator. "She got caught up, Maddy. I'm going to get it cleared up."

"_We_ are going to get it cleared up. You've done enough damage."

"Damage?"

"Why is she even part of this?" Madeline snapped.

"I can't tell you. Plus, they pulled me from the case."

"So you really can't protect her now."

"Maddy, that's not fair."

"This would never have happened if we hadn't agreed to send her to New York."

"She's twenty-one! How are you going to stop her?" Lindsay exclaimed stopping on the landing between stair cases.

"Don't you dare pull that now."

"You're just upset because she chose to come out here instead of going to Montana State."

"Don't turn this on me," Madeline exploded. "You're the one that couldn't protect her."

Lindsay felt the twinge in her chest that let her know Madeline Reichle had hit a nerve. "Emily doesn't need protection. She makes her own decisions."

"She was brought in on a murder case! We got a lovely call from the detective."

"She was no where near that apartment, Madeline."

"That's not what the detective is saying."

"We can't prove it," Lindsay said dejectedly.

"This is what I'm talking about," Madeline snapped. "How can you not prove she wasn't there?"

"She was at my apartment for a movie night. Dorm-mates saw her leave and she stayed over. No one saw her go back and they found evidence that could potentially put her at the scene." Lindsay hated being defensive, especially with family members. Madeline had an uncanny knack for putting Lindsay on the defensive.

"What?"

"Its part of the case, Maddy, I can't tell you," Lindsay repeated, sitting on the stair.

"This is your fault. You should have made sure she had everything with her. You should have made sure she knew what this Lynn girl was into."

"Lynn was clean, she doesn't have a criminal record. The biggest problem she had was that she was probably too sheltered."

"Please," Madeline scoffed.

"Look, Emily called me, Maddy. She hasn't been to class in three days and you know as well as I do that's not like her. She liked Lynn, considered her one of her friends. You know Em's always picked her friends well. She hasn't so much as gotten a warning since she's been at NYU."

"She's coming home when all of this is over," Madeline stated strongly. "You've done a great job of taking care of her. I'm suddenly not surprised you haven't found a husband and a family."

Lindsay heard the click of the phone cutting off and dropped her head in her free hand, tears welling in her eyes. She's managed to keep her hurt hidden while talking to her sister, but now that she was alone in the stairwell, it flooded her system in full force. She'd never cried at work, never allowed that much emotion to permeate her objectivity. Nevertheless, she hadn't been this upset since she left Montana.

She was exhausted, she was stressed and she was worried about Emily and her involvement with the case. That was what she would blame it on if anyone found her and asked about it. Once the first sob shook her slight frame, there was really nothing holding her back. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to muffle her sobs to keep them from echoing off the cement walls.

She felt a hand on her arm and heard her once-hated nickname and knew, if she asked, this could be ignored. She wasn't surprised when he wrapped and arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. She went willingly, curling a hand tightly in his shirt. He tucked her hand under his chin and waited out the storm.

His pager had gone off three times in the twenty minutes it took her to calm down but he ignored it every time. She figured hers had done the same, but on vibrate, she hadn't felt it. It wasn't until her breathing had calmed that a comment on it was made.

"You should probably answer that."

He picked it up. "Sid. It can wait."

She sniffled away the last of her tears. "We should tell him we're on our way." She moved to get up but his arms tightened around her.

"Lindsay, you look like hell. Sit down, calm down and we can apologize to Sid later," he promised.

She slapped him lightly, but didn't try to pull away.

"You gonna tell me about it?"

"I'm fine."

"You just spent twenty minutes soaking my shirt. That's not going to fly, Montana."

"Really, Danny."

"Lindsay…"

"Maddy's blaming me."

"Maddy?"

"My sister."

He'd always found silence to be the best technique for getting information out of people and he employed it now. Plus, how was he supposed to respond to that?

Lindsay sighed. "I've been going over that night, trying to figure out if there is a way to prove she was over with me, trying to figure out who might have seen both of us in my apartment, who else knew she was there."

"You can't blame yourself."

"She was there. She shouldn't even been involved in this."

"A lot of people shouldn't be in a lot of situations."

"She's so young, Danny. She didn't do anything."

"I believe you."

"We have to prove it."

"We can't."

"That's the problem. And the reason my sister just ripped into me."

"And the tears."

Lindsay was silent for a few moments, her hand clenching in his shirt until her knuckles were white. "Maddy didn't want Em to move. She wanted her to stay close to home, stay safe. Em convinced them that since I was here, she'd be perfectly safe here."

"She is safe here."

"She's a suspect in a murder! A murder I can't touch because of a conflict of interest."

"We're running prints now," he offered.

"Her prints… Em never knew Claudia's name let alone where she lived, Danny. Lynn… Em knew Lynn was fighting with her sister and our family… doesn't take well to family problems. Most of us are close and I know Em hated the way Lynn wasn't close with her sister. She always said that, always told me she loved that she was still really close with her brother and sister back home."

"Lynn and Claudia were on the outs?"

"Em didn't tell you?"

"We never asked."

"She hated it."

"She mentioned it was a movie night."

Liindsay nodded. "She thought it was offensive that I hadn't seen _Rent_," she reflected. "We watched it and _The Perfect Man_._"_

"That's what she said," Danny agreed. "Living vicariously, Monroe?"

She blushed, but smiled fondly. "I was exhausted the next day from staying up late. I'm glad Hawkes was there to go over the room with me."

Danny's phone chirped again, and Lindsay could have sworn it was actually angry. "We should go."

"Yeah," he agreed reluctantly, though neither of them moved for a moment.

Finally, she released the handful of his shirt she'd held tightly in her fist, using the edges of her own long sleeved shirt to dab at her eyes. "Presentable?"

She was rumpled and looked exhausted, but looked no less beautiful than ever. He knew better than to tell her the former when he probably looked just as tired. "Perfect."

Lindsay blushed but stood, straightening her shirt and watching him stand. She let out a breath, waving her down in front of him. _Its_ _an autopsy. Focus on the work, _she coached herself.

Her heart didn't slow down until Danny rested a hand on her lower back to guide her into the morgue.

* * *

"Prints came back from the apartment," Stella said, stepping into Lindsay and Danny's office around lunch time that day. The former had left ten minutes prior to pick up something for lunch. 

"And?" Danny inquired apprehensively.

"None of them are a match to Emily Reichle. Not so much as a print on the front door," Stella replied. "Our male vic's prints are on the bedroom door and the door knob. Lynn's prints are on the front door, and on the box of photos."

"In all honestly, Stel, I think we're looking at this the wrong way. Lindsay and I went through that box and found pictures of Claudia and our mail vic ripped in half. I brought back some of the pictures from Lynn's room and compared those and the ripped pictures to some found at Ryan Hann's place and they're identical. I'm starting to think our motives are off and Emily didn't have anything to do with this, like they've both been saying."

"So you're thinking break up gone wrong?"

Danny nodded. "Emily didn't have a motive. Those pictures showed both Claudia and Lynn getting cozy with Ryan Hann. I think Ryan wanted Claudia back but she wasn't going to go for it. He used Lynn to stay close to her."

Hawkes walked in at that moment, brandishing a folder. "DNA from the sheets has two donors, one: Ryan Hann and the other is running through CODIS. Blood on Ryan's hands comes back to Claudia Stevenson."

"So Ryan beat Claudia to death," Stella concluded. "Works with Danny's theory that Ryan wanted Claudia back."

"'If I can't have her no one can'," Danny agreed.

"Other DNA is male," Hawkes provided. "Supports the theory."

"Doesn't explain the gun shots. And where was the other guy when Claudia was being beaten?" Stella pointed out.

"Guy probably brought the gun with him," Danny answered. "Trace came back on the bedside table as cocaine."

"Miss Stevenson was an addict," Hawkes assumed.

"Tox came back negative for her," Danny contradicted. "I'd put my money on the guy she was sleepin' with."

"So what?" Stella asked. "Ryan finds out Claudia's got a new man, a druggie no less, beats her to death out of anger, then gets shot by the new boyfriend?"

"Doesn't explain Lynn being there," Hawkes said.

"Collateral damage?" Danny suggested. "Emily said Lynn was looking to patch things up."

A flash of determination went through Stella's eyes. "We have to find that boyfriend."

* * *

Danny's heart had lightened considerably after running over the evidence with Stella and Hawkes. Emily was off the hook, not that he'd truly believed she'd done it. 

"You look happy," Lindsay remarked, interrupting his train of thought as she entered, lunch in her arms.

"Emily's not our murderer."

Her brow knit in confusion. "I know that."

"Evidence proves it," he told her, watching her eyes brighten. "No prints and no DNA. Only evidence putting her at the scene is her cell phone which can easily be explained as an overprotective friend looking out for their room mate." He could almost see the tension draining from some of her muscles at the news.

"Thank goodness," she breathed.

Danny chuckled. "Figured you'd be excited. Now, hand over lunch."

* * *

Mac was surprised when Danny dropped his file on the marine's desk two hours earlier than he usually did. It wasn't Mac's place to pry and , unlike Flack, he wasn't one to joke about Danny's love life. 

"You're done early," he decided on.

"Yeah, figured if I actually buckled down today and did some work I might be able to get out of here a bit early," Danny admitted sheepishly.

Mac nodded. "Sounds good. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Are you serious?" Danny asked, taken aback by the simplicity of the whole thing.

"Yeah. You've worked hard today, so has Lindsay. If you see her, tell her to go home too."

Danny managed to hold in the smile until he'd turned his back on Mac after saying goodbye. He'd long ago decided he'd make sure Lindsay left when he did. He found her in their office, papers strewn across the surface.

"Mac says get out of here," he announced, leaning a hip on the edge of her desk, close enough to her and the pages to read them properly.

"I can't," she groaned.

"No choice, Montana."

She chuckled slightly. "You haven't given me a choice in the last couple of weeks, Messer."

Danny pretended to think for a minute. "I let you choose lunch and dinner. Now come on. There's a game on tonight and your couch is more comfortable than mine."

"Another game?"

"Montana, there's always a game." The look on her face told him she knew there was no game on. Still, she didn't argue.

"You're getting dinner."

"I got dinner yesterday," he retorted.

"And you're using my couch and my TV, therefore, you're going to buy me dinner," she told him flatly.

There really wasn't much of an argument he could honestly put up so he kept his mouth shut. It would do him no good to annoy her now just to save his injured pride. "Can we go then?"

Lindsay smiled at the childish behaviour of her partner. "I guess. Let me pack up and drop this off with Stella. I'll meet you downstairs in… ten minutes."

Danny nodded and strolled out of the room.

* * *

_**Let me know if this doesn't fit with what's happened. I wrote this before I wrote the interview scene with Emily and tried to edit it, but I'm not sure how well that worked.**_

**_Thanks to everyone that's reviewed thus far. As I'm sure you're all well aware, you guys are fabulous. If I_** **_could, I'd bake you all cookies._**

**_Oh, and I almost posted 8 instead of 7! That wouldn't make any sense. Thus, here's the same author's note. Thank Stacey, a reviewer for Christmas Wishes, who reminded me I had to post this._**


	8. Chapter 8

The part of their relationship that Danny enjoyed the most was their ability to just sit. Talking wasn't always necessary and the ability to sit in comfortable silence with another person was something he valued greatly. Some women tried to 'get to know him' a little too fast for his taste. Lindsay wasn't trying at all and he found himself even more endeared to her.

The television was on to some mindless sitcom and neither of them were chatting as they munched on Mexican food they'd stopped for on the way. He was about to break the silence when the door did for him.

Lindsay brushed off her hands, and stood, making her way to the door. Madeline stood on the other side.

"Emily's coming back to Montana."

Lindsay looked up at her sister slowly. "You came here to tell me that?"

"She's not safe here."

Lindsay ignored that. "She'd okay with that?"

Madeline pulled herself up as tall as she could. "She doesn't get a choice."

Lindsay assumed that by the fact that Madeline was the one standing in front of her and not Emily. "She's twenty-one, well above the age of majority. Technically you have no control."

"She's coming back."

"No she's not."

Madeline and Lindsay jumped at Emily's voice. Madeline was the first to react.

"I told you to stay with your father."

Lindsay knew the tone in Madeline's voice and figured Emily would back down. She was surprised.

"I'm not a lapdog," Emily snapped.

"Emily Caitlynn Reichle, you will not take that tone of voice with me!"

"Mom, stop. Just stop."

Lindsay felt horrible and responsible. It was one thing for Madeline to yell at and scream at her, to blame her for what happened to her precious daughter, since the family was already upset with her choice of career, choice of habitation and choice of values, but for Emily to yell at her own mother made Lindsay's stomach churn. "Em, stop, it's okay. Really."

"No, it's not okay at all. You made your choice Aunt Linds, and I for one am proud of what you've accomplished. You didn't force anything on me. I made the choice to come out here, decided to attend NYU. Mom doesn't have the right to blame you for my choices."

"We let you come here because she was here to keep an eye on you," Madeline claimed angrily, pointing a finger at Lindsay.

"I'm not five years old!" Emily exclaimed. "I haven't been in over fifteen years. I haven't lost any of the sense of responsibility I had in Montana."

"You were accused of murder!" Madeline maintained.

"Never arrested, only interviewed. Detective Taylor and Detective Flack apologized. Its over and there's no record for me," Emily argued, remarkably calm.

"There was nothing she could have done to help you." Madeline was close to screaming and Lindsay was pretty sure her neighbours were going to start complaining.

"Oh please, Mom. What the hell have you done for me since you've been here? What have you done to help?" Emily inquired. "Fingerprints cleared me, trace cleared me, science cleared me. Aunt Linds works with that, so I'd say she's done more than you have."

The hall rang with a slap and Lindsay jumped. Danny was by her side in an instant, ready to step in if necessary. Emily's hand slowly came up to her cheek, eyes spitting fire. Lindsay's face mirrored Madeline's in awe and fear.

"I'm staying in New York," Emily spoke lowly. She turned around to leave, her mind set on taking a cab and getting back to residence. At the door to the stairwell, two doors down from Lindsay's apartment, she stopped and turned back.

"Aunt Linds, the one family member shunned, is the one that is best off. You still live under the expections of Nan and Allison won't divorce her abusive husband because she'd afraid you and Nan and Pa are going to turn against her. You live in the past, with beliefs that oppress your children and may kill your own sister. Lindsay lives her life for her, does things the way she wants to. She has a career, she gives back to society in a way that isn't a PTA or volunteer. That is the life I am going to live and to do that, I'm going to stay in New York."

Lindsay, Danny and Madeline stood stunned, Lindsay's cheeks bright red from the praise. It was Danny that broke the silence with a chuckle. Both women turned surprised eyes on him and he held up his hands in surrender.

"She's got spunk," he offered. "She's a mini-Montana."

Lindsay sighed, shaking her head. "Inside, Danny," she requested softly. Madeline was the only one left as Lindsay closed the door, checking to see it was unlocked and she could get back inside.

"Mini-Montana?" Madeline asked, her voice betraying the fact that she was still in shock.

"Maddy, that's irrelevant," Lindsay said on a sigh, pressing two fingers to the bridge of her nose.

Then Madeline did something Lindsay had never expected. She broke down. "I've lost her."

Lindsay stood awkwardly before placing a hand on her sister's back. She wasn't sure what the reaction would be and how angry Madeline was with her and wasn't sure how much contact she would be willing to take. "What are you talking about?"

"My daughter… I've lost her."

Lindsay pulled away, deciding the only way anything was going to get through to Madeline was through blunt, stark honesty. "You pushed her away."

"She pushed us away! She moved out here, rejected everything she grew up with."

"She moved to New York, Maddy. You're the one that's assuming she's changed."

"You rejected everything."

"I decided to get a career instead of being a housewife," Lindsay said in exasperation, feeling like she'd been over it a million times.

"She wants to be just like you," Madeline revealed, tears streaming down her face. "She wants to go into whatever science you're in. She's going to put herself in so much danger."

Lindsay sighed. "Just because I live in New York doesn't mean I've changed Maddy. I still love Mom and Dad, I love you and Allison, I love Bozeman. But my life is here now, my job, my friends… I can't leave and I don't want to."

"That's what I'm talking about," Maddy exclaimed. "She'll never want to come home."

"You're being irrational," Lindsay said frankly, her irritation starting to show through. "I come home for Christmas and Thanksgiving and I would come home more often but my job doesn't allow it."

"I'm going to lose my daughter."

"You're going to lose her if you keep this up," Lindsay snapped. "You slapped her Madeline, you're oppressing her, you're threatening to withdraw her tuition. Let her live her own life and make her own decisions." She saw Andrew coming up the stairs. "You'll push her away more than you'll help her." She nodded to Andrew before returning to the safety of her apartment and throwing the locks. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood.

"Montana?" His hand came to rest on her back.

"Its okay, really," Lindsay responded. "Just the regular family problems."

"Thought you were a family girl."

She turned around, his hand falling away, her back still resting against the door. "Every family has problems, Danny."

He had to give her that. His family had a whole bunch of skeletons in the closet. His hand came up unconsciously to cup her cheek. "You deal with it well."

The minute his hand touched her cheek she flashed back to the sheets in the lab and was suddenly hypersensitive to his proximity and touch. "Thank you," she managed, her mind foggy. She subconsciously turned to snuggle her cheek into his hand.

Danny moved his hands to bracket her head, watching her eyes flutter open and feeling his blood speed up. God, he wanted to kiss her and never let her go. He wasn't sure, looking at her now, she'd be against it. Nevertheless, she had been, and was still going through, what he perceived to be a dramatic time in her life. His head screamed at him that she was vulnerable and to push their relationship now would haunt him later. Instead, he pulled her away from the door into his arms, tucking her head under his chin.

Lindsay's head was spinning. Her heart yelled at her to give in, to kiss him and release the tension between them. Her head made her feel like she would regret it later. It was the same part of her that had had turned him down and stood him up months ago. She'd learned to listen to her head instead of her heart. Her head also screamed that she wasn't his type, wasn't blonde, top-heavy bimbo that held onto his every word. She fought him, teased him and challenged him and that, she figured, was not what he wanted.

She'd take what she could get for now.

But she wasn't going to be greedy. She'd limit herself. She knew she was in love with him, but she wasn't suicidal, she wasn't about to make herself miserable by seriously playing house with him now. It was self-preservation that made her pull away slightly.

"Dinner?" she asked softly.

"Chinese? Italian?" he responded, his eyes locking on hers and his hands bracketing her hips.

Lindsay shook her head. "Western."

"I don't think I get where you're going with this."

"There is food in this place."

His eyebrows hit his hairline. "You're going to cook for me?"

When he worded it like that it made her blush in embarrassment. "I can cook you know. It was a 'necessary skill' in Montana."

Danny chuckled. "Never questioned your ability, Montana, just surprised. I can't remember the last time a gorgeous woman cooked me dinner."

She blushed harder at his praise. "Your girlfriend doesn't cook?"

He grinned at her assumption. "That would require me to have a girlfriend. With the hours we've been keeping, its pretty impossible to have a significant other."

Something swelled in her heart with the knowledge he wasn't dating. She wasn't necessarily all that happy with her reaction. "Yeah. Well, I'm going to cook."

He rewarded her with his knee-melting grin. "I feel spoiled."

Lindsay laughed, her heart lightening substantially. He had that effect on her. "All right. I'll get it started."

Neither of them moved for a moment.

"Danny?" she asked quietly.

He sighed, his breath fanning over her face. "Right, dinner." He dropped his hands from her hips and took a step back. He felt the loss of her body's heat acutely.

Her eyes stayed locked on his. "Give me half an hour, tops."

"Company?" He watched her eyes light up, even though her face never changed. Hope started uncurling in his chest. Maybe she wasn't all that against a relationship with him after all.

"If you want," she conceded. "But stay away from the food. I won't have your grimy New York hands all over my Montana cooking."

The sexual innuendo was on the tip of his tongue but he held it back. "Take all the fun out of making dinner," he groused. Lindsay would never be a one night stand for him and as a result, he wouldn't treat her as such. That didn't stop him from watching her ass as she walked into the kitchen.

He was pleasantly surprised by her cooking and told her as much. She blushed prettily, the same way she had when eh told him she would be cooking.

"I don't like cooking for one and I tend to find the need to when I'm upset," she told him, well aware that the three glasses of wine she'd consumed were loosening her tongue.

He was concerned. "Your sister got to you?"

Lindsay shrugged. "Its fine for them to pretend I don't exist, that I made a bad decision. I'm a big girl and I found myself a new family in New York. That doesn't mean it doesn't still bug me."

"A family?"

Lindsay shrugged again as she pulled his plate to stack it on top of hers. "I've got Mac and Stella as 'parents', Sid, the crazy uncle, Hawkes for an older brother, Adam for the quirky younger brother…" she trailed off, taking the plates to the kitchen.

"Everybody's got a place?" he asked, his eyes searching for hers.

"Yes," she affirmed, locking eyes with his. "Everybody."

Danny was out of his seat and in front of her, faster than her eyes could actually track, his lips fusing to hers and tipping her head back with the force. Lindsay didn't mind so much and pushed herself up on her toes. His arms wrapped tightly around her back, supporting her as close to him as possible. Her arms stayed by her side for the seconds it took him to touch his tongue to her lips. Then they cupped his face, pulling him closer to her. Eventually, they pulled away, though Danny didn't give her a rest.

"God…" she gasped as he nipped his way down the column of her neck. Her mind screamed at her to stop, but she felt so much from him, so much that drowned out the negative feelings her sister had left and made her feel truly loved, that there was little she could actually do to make herself stop.

His hand paused on the hem of her shirt, his fingertips stroking the bare skin of her stomach. "Lindsay, are you sure?"

Her caramel eyes met his, molten in their intensity. Her mind was waging a war with her hormones and heart. She wanted this, didn't she? She wanted to feel adored, and Danny had been doing a good job with doing that. "Is this going to be a one-night stand?"

Danny cupped her face in his hands, making sure their eyes stayed locked. "It never could be."

She kissed him to stop her tears. Maybe, just maybe, it would work between them.

"Lindsay," he groaned, pulling away. "I'm not going to do this if you're not sure."

"We're going to have to make some ground rules," she started, unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom. "And there's no way this is going to be easy."

He grinned, dealing with the fastening on her pants. "Never thought it would be," he returned, allowing her hands to leave him long enough for him to remove her shirt.

She smiled, her hands back on his body trailing from his shoulders to his waistband, hooking her fingertips under the edge. She used that to pull him flush against her.

"Montana, I'm serious."

"So am I," she assured him, leaning up and towards him. "I'm sure, Danny. I want this."

That was all he needed.

* * *

Lindsay woke as she had every other morning that week, curled against Danny's body. By his breathing, he was already awake. She raised her head to check her alarm clock, noticing there was still a good twenty minutes before it would start blaring. Happily, she relaxed again. 

"Regrets?" he murmured, a hand drifting over the curve of her waist and his lips pressed to her hair.

She tilted her head up, pushing her body until she could press a kiss to his lips, one that almost instantly grew out of hand.

"I'll take that as a 'no'," he quipped. He was silent for a moment. "We're going to have to talk about this."

"Danny…"

"What changed your mind?" He'd wanted to know since he'd woken and looked down at her. If they were going to make this work, they were going to have to start communicating.

Lindsay shrugged.

"Not good enough, Montana." The last thing he wanted this to be was a reaction to her insecurities with her sister and family.

"I wanted to," she answered slowly.

"You didn't want to a couple of months ago."

She sighed, eyes tracing her hand on his stomach. "I just… I wanted to, Danny. Can't that be enough?"

"Not if we're going to take this beyond a one night stand, Linds. You've got to give me more."

Lindsay was silent for a moment, gathering courage and words. "Emily was right. After my shooting, I started living my life more for me, not really caring what my parents and family thought because I realized that life is short and it could be gone the next time I blinked. I took the job here because I knew it would be an awesome opportunity. I made the choice for me."

"Why did you turn me away?"

Lindsay breathed deeply. "You've seen the way people I love treat me. The Montana attitude didn't breed career women either. The guys I dated eventually gave up because of the unpredictable hours and it hurt. Some of them sided with my family after the shooting and wanted me to quit… I was scared it was going to happen again, and I don't think I could go through it again."

There were a million clichéd things he could've said to try and placate her, to reassure her that his mentality was different, but that would be half a lie. She scared him to death when she was at a scene, when she interviewed a suspect without him or Mac or Flack. The case with the Hollys had taught him he couldn't lose her. Instead, he chose a different path. "I'm not going to lie to you, Montana. I can't guarantee I won't hurt you." To his surprise, a dazzling smile took up residence on her face.

"I know, but you understand the hours I keep and the crazy schedule. You know that there's bad cases that are easier buried that discussed," she tried to explain. "And you understand that I can't quit my job, consequences be damned."

He had no verbal response to that and instead cuddled her closer.

She was seconds from drifting off to sleep again when the alarm sounded. She groaned, reaching out and fumbling for the offending object.

"You know, we could both hop in the shower, make a stop at my place and I'll pick up breakfast on the way," Danny suggested.

"Arriving together? The rumour mill will start buzzing," Lindsay quipped, already half out of bed. She paused at the door to her bathroom, glancing back. "You coming?" she inquired with an arched eyebrow.

He almost beat her to the bathroom.

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

They did step onto the floor of the lab at the same time, discussing a case and arguing over evidence context. Lindsay found it amusing that they could shift so easily into 'work-mode'. In fact, if I hadn't been for the way he'd all but undressed her with his eyes in the elevator on the way up, she would have wondered if the previous night had been a really good dream.

"Danny," Stella called. "We got a hit in AFIS on the shower prints."

"Yeah?" he replied, breaking off his conversation with Lindsay in order to hear the news.

"Yeah. You were right. He was arrested for possession in '01 and '03, then possession with intent," she rattled off.

"Any weapons charges?"

Stella shook her head.

"Doesn't mean he doesn't have a gun," Lindsay pointed out. "I'm going to head to trace and check prints from the Reiss case." She stepped around Stella with a smile and disappeared.

"We have a name?" Part of him felt better discussing the case without Lindsay around, even though everything had been cleared up.

"Yeah," Stella answered, flipping open the file in her hands. "Derek Reynolds."

Danny held up a finger as his cell phone vibrated at his hip. He flipped it open to check the text message from the number he'd labelled 'Montana'. _Trace. See you at lunch._ He smiled at her assumption as he snapped the phone shut, making a mental note to take her down to the deli for some privacy.

"Girlfriend?" Stella asked curiously, really just glad to see him truly happy.

Danny's smile grew secretive. "Something like that."

"You're not going to tell your favourite CSI?"

Danny laughed. "Mac's not around, Stel."

"Ha ha," Stella replied dryly.

"So we bringin' this guy in?"

Stella sobered, her grin turning more malicious than happy. "Flack left ten minutes ago."

Danny mirrored her grin. "Let me know when he gets back. You'd better believe I'm getting in on this one."

"Sure thing," Stella answered as they split their separate ways.

* * *

Lindsay was surprised by the lack of human life in the print lab when she entered in the late morning. She wasn't particularly against it, especially since the print lab was one of the few places with an active, working CD player. It wasn't often she indulged herself in music at work, but she felt rather upbeat for a day at work. Country music played softly as she worked and she found herself humming along to the melody.

The knock on the door made her jump.

"Emily?"

Her niece looked like she'd been run over. "Hey Aunt Linds."

"What on earth happened to you?"

"Blow up with Mom."

Lindsay sighed and started packing up her evidence. She'd gotten enough done that she figured she could take a break. After all, this was the last thing she wanted to happen to Emily because of what had happened and she blamed herself.

She wrapped her arm around Emily's shoulder after she'd cleaned up and turned off her music. "Come on, Bunny. Let's have a talk."

Those were the soft words she'd used since Emily could talk in order to calm her and warn her that the conversation was going to be serious. Lindsay hadn't the need to call Emily 'Bunny' in ages.

She chose the office she shared with Danny instead of a coffee shop or the break room. She and Danny were usually the only ones to use that room, not anyone else, and since she figured Danny would be busy tracking down the suspect for the Stevenson case, they had the room to themselves.

"Talk to me," Lindsay requested, sitting Emily in her chair and leaning against her desk.

"I fought with Mom."

"You told me that, Em. What did you fight with her about?"

"College. Montana. You."

"Me?" Now she was really feeling guilty.

"Mom think's you're a bad influence."

"I became a bad influence the moment I applied to come to New York. Earlier even," Lindsay replied, trying to gauge Emily's particular mood.

"I know."

"Emily…."

"She wants me to go back. I won't do it." Emily's eyes were defiant as they met Lindsay's.

"I don't expect you to," Lindsay said honestly. "You love your school."

"Why can't Mom see that?"

"She's worried about you, that's all."

"I'm old enough to take care of myself. And it's not like I don't talk to her on a regular basis."

"I know that. That's what I told her."

"That's the other thing: she shouldn't be involving you in this. This is a fight between her and I, nothing to do with you."

"She's upset with me too because I came here in the first place, because I broke tradition and gave you the chance to move here and get an education that wasn't at Montana State. I gave you a chance at something that the family had never seen."

"And she's upset?"

"She figured you'd be like her, not like me."

"I like who I am," Emily whispered.

Lindsay pulled her up and into her arms. "I like who you are too. Don't ever question that."

"Why is she doing this?" Emily asked and Lindsay could hear the tears in her voice.

"She loves you, Bunny, really. She doesn't want to lose you."

The nickname had always calmed her. This time it made her heart hitch. Her aunt had a nickname for her, her mother called her Emily. "I hate this. She's making me hate this. She's making me hate her."

Like a mother, Lindsay pulled back and tucked Emily's hair behind her ears. "Don't say that," she scolded softly. "It's only going to make a bad situation worse."

"I'm still supposed to love her?"

"She's your mother."

"And she knows nothing about me," Emily responded spitefully.

"You talked to her about this?"

"I tried. She yelled at me."

Lindsay sighed. When was Madeline going to learn that her daughter was the best thing in her life? Lindsay wanted kids, but she loved her job too. The fact that she hadn't felt any guy she'd been with would be a good enough father went unacknowledged in her mind, as did the fact that she could picture herself having kids with Danny.

"I don't know if she'll ever understand," Lindsay finally said honestly. "She was always like Mom, always wanted to have kids and get married and settle down. She never had ideas for careers and never really wanted one outside of being a mother and wife. You and I had, and have, different ideas."

"I want to have a career," Emily whispered.

"I know you do, honey and I want you to have a career too. I want you to finish school and do something with your life that isn't just kids and kitchens."

Emily hiccupped with the effort of holding in her tears. Her throat was burning. "Mom doesn't want me to end up like you."

"Like me?"

"Alone."

Lindsay couldn't stop the smile blossoming over her face at the assumption. "Sweetheart, I'm not alone."

At that moment, like every clichéd movie or corny romance novel, Danny stepped in, a triumphant grin on his face. Lindsay found a soft smile spreading over her face as she locked eyes with him.

_I'm not alone at all._

"Everything okay?" he asked, standing far enough away to be appropriate, but close enough to give comfort.

Emily pulled away from Lindsay, quickly wiping her eyes. "Fine, detective."

Danny's eyes appealed to Lindsay.

"We're fine. Crisis moment, that's all," she assured him. "You find your guy?"

"He wasn't at home so Flack's still trying to track him down. Stel said she'd call."

Lindsay's lips curved in a teasing smile. "How long did you pester her for?"

"I resent that," Danny shot back.

Lindsay chuckled. There was a new ease about them now that they'd determined where they sat in their relationship and Lindsay enjoyed it. When she looked back at Emily, she noticed a soft, somewhat sad smile on her face. She also knew why. "See? Not alone at all."

Emily's smile grew slightly. Her next comment was directed at Danny. "I'm glad you took my advice, Detective."

"Yeah, well I'm not one to leave a damsel in distress," Danny quipped. "Now, anybody up for lunch?"

"I'm good," Emily protested immediatlely.

Lindsay and Danny exchanged a look. "Honey, it was a rhetorical question," Lindsay replied. "It'll do you some good to get out for a bit. I'll talk to your dad later and see if he can talk some sense into your mom, okay?" Madeline was the bull-headed sibling and Andrew had always been the level-headed one in the relationship – the opposite of her and Danny.

"It's really okay…"

"No choice, mini-Montana. Anywhere in particular you'd like to go?" Danny inquired as he held the door open for them.

"I'm really not hungry," Emily tried again.

Lindsay laughed. "Just pick a place, Em. And pick somewhere expensive. I have a feeling Danny's paying."

Emily smiled as she watched them together. Hope uncurled in her chest. After all, even if her mother had told her she would end up alone, Lindsay proved that having a career and having a relationship didn't seem to be mutually exclusive.


	10. Chapter 10

Lindsay knocked tentatively on the hotel room door Madeline and Andrew were sharing while they were in New York. She'd taken thirty seconds to track it down instead of asking Emily and was thankful. Andrew was the one that opened the door.

"Lindsay."

"Andrew. Is Madeline around?" Lindsay had always liked Andrew. He was quieter than Lindsay would have expected Madeline to go for but he'd subtly stood by her decision to move to New York and her decision to keep her job. The fact that he was a big city native – Calgary, Alberta until his father's job had brought him across the border to the United States just before high school – had her appealing to him more than Madeline.

"She's 'cooling off' I believe."

Lindsay sighed. "Good. I wanted to talk to you."

"I'm not sure what I can do this time, Linds," he told her honestly, opening the door so Lindsay could step in. "Maddy's pretty upset."

"Emily came to me at the lab this morning," Lindsay replied, taking a seat on one of the chairs by the window. "She told me she's starting to hate her own mother." If that didn't explain to Andrew how dire the situation was, Lindsay wasn't sure what would.

"She said that?" Andrew asked, partially defeated and dropping into the chair across from her.

"You and I both know Emily doesn't hate anyone."

"Not without good reason. Maddy's not giving her a good reason."

"Don't. You're not on Maddy's side about this. Emily's right, she deserves to do what she wants."

"This is a big city…"

"You lived in a big city as a kid," Lindsay pointed out. "Look, I don't want this to get worse. I don't want Maddy and Emily to have a falling out because of her room mate's murder, a murder Emily had no part in."

"This would never have happened in Bozeman."

"You know most of the people when you live in Bozeman."

"You want her to stay."

Lindsay sighed. "I want what she wants, Andy. Honestly. If she wants to stay in New York, wants to study at NYU and get a career, she should be able to do that."

"Maddy wants her to get married, to have kids."

"What's to say she won't?" Lindsay asked frankly. "I've juggled both."

"Never a family. Your relationships fell apart when the guys found out what your job was, no offence," Andrew pointed out.

"That doesn't mean there isn't one out there that doesn't understand what I do," she replied, her mind flashing to Danny. "Emily will find someone too."

"Big cities are more dangerous than small towns."

"Accidents happen in big cities. There's no such thing as an accident in Bozeman." The tone of her voice was bitter. There were parts of her shooting that her family didn't know and wouldn't know. She would never tell them who it was who shot her, never tell them the connection between them, and never, ever, tell them about the things she'd lost in that shooting.

"I don't know what you want me to do."

"I want you to make sure neither of them makes a mistake. Maddy can be hot-headed, I know that, but Emily's just as stubborn as she is. Something's going to have to give, they're going to have to make a compromise."

Andrew sighed. "Why are you doing this?"

Lindsay smiled as she stood, making her way to the door and turning back. "I regret not patching things up with Mom before I came here. I don't talk to her as much as I wish I did. I don't want that to happen with Maddy and Em," she answered simply, closing the door firmly behind her.

* * *

Danny knew three things when he stepped into the interrogation room with Flack and Stella:

!) Derek Reynolds was scum. There was nothing else he could describe the man as, if he could even call the guy a man.

2) There was no question; this guy was an addict. He shook and his eyes looked like crap. If they couldn't hold him on murder, they were most likely going to be able to hold him on drug charges. He was pretty confident about the murder anyway, since an in depth look at his apartment had revealed a gun that had been fired. Tests had said it was the gun that had shot Lynn Stevenson and Ryan Hann

3) His Montana was behind the window watching the whole thing.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Reynolds maintained as Stella stepped up to him.

"We haven't even started and you're already denying everything," she said with a twisted smile. She dropped an autopsy picture on the table. "Claudia Stevenson."

Danny noticed Reynolds' Adam's apple bob. "You know her?" Theoretically, it was a rhetorical question.

"Nope."

"Don't lie to us, Derek. It doesn't look good when you go to court," Flack picked up, taking the chair beside Stella, across from Reynolds. Danny stayed standing.

"So what if I did."

"We know you didn't beat her," Stella replied.

Reynolds' hand came to trace the face in the picture. "I never could."

_Even addicts have feelings_, Danny thought to himself. "When did you see her last?"

"She called me a couple of weeks ago. I went over."

"You get high while you were there?" Danny asked, surprised at how much of a wimp this guy was. Most of the other druggies and dealers were adversarial in the interrogation room. Reynolds was passive.

"We both did."

"So what happened, Derek?"

"She was dead when I came out. I was going to have a shower after… When I came out, she was dead."

"And no one was there?" Stella asked, even though she, Danny and Flack had already figured out the answer to that.

Reynolds nodded.

"See, that's not the way it went down, Derek," Flack stated, leaning forward on the metal table. "You know it."

"Ryan Hann was there when you got out of the shower. He was surprised at what he'd done, beating up the woman he claimed to love. You were angry too, so you did the first thing you could think of and grabbed your gun. You killed him because he killed your girlfriend."

Reynolds was silent.

"So tell me, Derek," Danny started, sitting down beside the druggie. "Why her?" He placed a picture of Claudia's sister down beside the one of Claudia. "She was just there to patch things up with her sister."

"But that didn't matter much, did it, because she was the only witness, to you shooting Ryan. She'd been in the living room, looking through the pictures in Claudia's picture box but came to the door when she heard the shot," Stella added smoothly. "She was turning to run, to get out of there, but you couldn't have someone around who could pin you on this. It was a perfect murder/suicide. But Lynn saw it all."

"Claudia didn't want anything to do with him!" Reynolds exploded. "She promised he was out of her life. Then he showed up at her apartment door or whatever. I could hear them fighting from the bathroom, then silence. I looked out to check on her and she was just lying there! I was angry." He appealed to Danny and Flack. "What would you have done?"

Danny was pretty sure he'd beat the other guy right back, but didn't say it.

"She would have been my first priority," Flack stated stonily.

Reynolds looked confused.

Stella's lips twisted into a thin line. "While you were shooting Claudia's ex and her sister, Claudia's internal injuries were killing her. You could have saved her if you'd called 9-1-1."

Danny followed Stella out of the room, coming to stand next to Lindsay by the window. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders for a split second. "Come on, Montana. Let's go home."

Lindsay sighed, arms crossed over her chest. "All of this, and he's… he doesn't even know the damage he's caused."

Danny nodded, physically turning her away from the window this time. "I know, Linds. It sucks."

The tension leaked out of her shoulders where his hands rested as he marched her down the hall. "Cook me dinner?" she asked softly, thankful for the usual bustle of the lab so only he was able to hear her.

"Anything you want, Montana," he promised with a smile. "I'll meet you downstairs in fifteen."


	11. Chapter 11

Epilogue

Lindsay was contentedly snuggled up to Danny on her couch, their now-empty plates on the coffee table in front of them. The case was done, Madeline and Andrew would be heading back to Montana as soon as they could and Lindsay had Danny. She was pretty sure these nights weren't going to stop any time soon.

She was drifting off, her eyes sliding closed, when the buzzer sounded. She groaned, slowly extricating herself from Danny's arms.

"I'm not going back," Emily said when Lindsay opened the door for her. She was sporting a rather excited smile.

"What?" Lindsay asked genuinely confused. "You already told me that."

"I know, but Mom's okay with it."

Now Lindsay understood. "What happened?" She ushered Emily inside without any more questions, sitting her on the couch and taking her spot beside Danny again.

"I'm not sure even I understand," Emily admitted, watching happily as Danny's arm snaked around Lindsay's waist, regardless of Lindsay's attention on her and Danny's attention on the television. "Mom called me yesterday and apologized. I'm not even sure why."

Lindsay had an idea, but wouldn't tell Emily. She was just glad Andrew had helped Madeline understand that alienating her daughter was the worst way to get her to keep in contact, and maybe even come home one day. "I'm glad, Em. I really am."

"How did you do it?" Emily asked curiously.

"I didn't," Lindsay said honestly. "I just talked to your dad."

"Well Daddy must have pulled some magic because she's okay with me staying here," Emily said, the happiness showing in her voice. "Anyway, I wanted to be the one to tell you that I'm still going to be here, so our monthly nights will have to continue."

Lindsay laughed. "Of course," she agreed moving to stand.

Emily waved her down again. "You stay, I can see myself out," she said with a secret smile that had Lindsay blushing.

"Call me when you get home," Lindsay told her niece firmly.

"Always Aunt Linds," Emily called back with an affectionate roll of her eyes, closing the door firmly behind her.

Danny looked down at the woman curled up in his arms, curiosity getting the better of him. "How did you do it? I thought you said your sister was stubborn."

"She is, but she's like my mom. She doesn't know when to make a compromise and when letting something go is the best thing you can do."

"'Cause if it comes back…" Danny said, trailing off and shifting her until she was over his lap, her head tilted towards his.

"It's meant to be," Lindsay whispered, sealing her mouth over his.

* * *

**_Thank you so much to each and every person who has stuck with me through this and been patiently waiting for updates._ _I have a sequel almost completely written that addresses what I didn't in this story, let me know if you want it._**


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